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Monthly Archives: February 2015

This year, St Patrick’s Technical College has adopted a new internal structure aligning courses, staff and students into three sub-schools:

School of Building & Construction

School of Community Services, Hospitality & Lifestyle

School of Engineering & Transport

This structure mirrors those in place at TAFE SA and establishes a framework for the future expansion of courses at St Patrick’s.

College Deputy Principal, Mr Terry Neville, explains the pedagogy behind this move in this edition of the Principal’s Blog.

St Patrick’s Technical College is well known as an innovative educational institution, with a history of excellence in all areas of teaching and learning. One of these reasons for excellence is the personal attention given to students through the use of mentoring and now development of the Sub-school infrastructure.

These Sub-schools are semi-autonomous units that are self-directing and self-governing. They are responsible for the course development and delivery, monitoring of behaviour and progress of students, communication with parents and provision of pastoral care.

They are led by three educational leaders who assume the multi-dimensional role of Head of Sub–school and are supported by the student welfare team who are jointly responsible for the monitoring of behaviour and progress of students in the school.

Sub-schools improve student learning outcomes through the promotion of positive student-teacher relationships. They encourage and support communication among teachers in improving their teaching and enhance collaboration among teachers in attacking school-wide problems. The traditional school organisation minimises collective, collegial behaviour on the part of teachers. “It leads to bureaucratic, rule-prone direction from the top but then creates autonomous teachers who, behind their classroom doors, can readily ignore much of the top-down direction.” St Patrick’s Technical College has been deliberately structured to avoid this.

Central to the concept of Sub-schools are a number of other beliefs:

That an organisation’s structure can enhance the working environment for students and teachers.

That a consistent, whole of school approach to effective teaching and learning is essential to the development of an effective school that seeks to maximise student learning outcomes (i.e. academic, social and personal).

That teaching strategies and curriculum should focus on the maturity level of students. The more individualised instruction, the more it meets the psychological needs of students, particularly young adolescents.

That teaching and learning is relevant to the employment needs of industry.

That only through the collective efforts of teachers, can schools operate effectively.

Collective teaching has a stronger influence on student achievement than individual teaching.

Teacher accountability is achieved through ownership, commitment and collegiality rather than through supervision.

In a shared-influence setting, such as a Sub-school, teachers have less individual autonomy because the pressure to do things differently comes from a source they need to respond to – their peers. This loss of individual autonomy is offset, however, by the collective ability to do things on behalf of student learning that the teacher is not able to do in isolation.

Learning partnerships are generated.

Sub-schools foster student growth and development and a deeper sense of belonging for all involved in the school community.

The three Sub-schools at St Patrick’s Technical College are:

School of Engineering & Transport

School of Building & Construction

School of Community Services, Hospitality & Lifestyle

Aims of the Sub-schools:

Improved student outcomes

Increasing enrolments

More diverse school community

Very high expectations from parents and staff for student achievement

Effective parental engagement

Very few behaviour issues

Greater employment outcomes

Opportunity to develop new specialist pre-vocational courses

Heads of Sub-schools support teachers and teaching through:

Ensuring explicit teaching is a focus throughout the school

In-class and on-job teacher mentoring

Regular schedule of collective teaching

Collaborative planning

Moderated assessment

Helping to set individual student targets

Assisting in the transfer of learning from Professional Development back into classrooms

So far as we are aware, Patrick becomes the first graduate of St Patrick’s to hire an apprentice from his alma mater – a significant milestone indeed!

Patrick began his carpentry apprenticeship in September 2007 with the Master Builders Association, training with ATEC. In a short space of time he has completed his qualifications, has set up his own business and is now investing in training as his host employers did when employing him only a short number of years ago.

Well done Patrick and congratulations, Hayden. Look out for a story about Hayden and Patrick in The Advertsier on Saturday 28 March in the CareerOne liftout.

Each year the College supports students who wish to mark their years spent at St Patrick’s Technical College with a commemorative item of clothing. This item is not compulsory to purchase but it can be worn as part of the official College uniform. It is one way in which we are happy for students to display their pride in the school and camaraderie among their classmates.

Following the introduction of a high quality garment last year, this year’s jacket will again be supplied by A1 Apparel at a cost of approximately $80. (NB – final price will be dependant of quantity ordered).

SbAT students have had the opportunity to try on a jacket and confirm their size during the past week. Campus-based students will have the same opportunity during their morning PC Group time in Week 3.

Students have the option of personalising their jacket with their name / nickname. All names will be approved by the College Principal prior to placing the order.

Students should return their order forms, distributed during Week 2, by Friday 20 February 2015. A follow-up letter to authorise the personalisation will follow including final cost details and payment information.